Comparison of Differences between CS5.5 vs. CS5 vs. CS4 vs. CS3

One of the most common upgrade questions we see out there is asking what’s new, what’s different, what’s better, what’s changed between Adobe CS5.5 and CS5 or CS4? Or more fundamentally, what are the key new features in CS5.5, versus earlier versions, even CS3?

Creative Suite 5 contains hundreds of new or enhanced features and func­tions across the 13 point products that comprise it. So the easiest way to look at it is by major product… For example, Photoshop CS5 Extended con­tains 18 new features that CS4 didn’t have, plus a further 14 more that have been enhanced. The numbers are similar for other products and even greater over CS3 of course – although generally speaking CS5 has significantly more improvements and innovation compared to CS4 than CS4 had over CS3.

Creative Suite 4 was certainly a capable release (we used it here every day), but some folks have com­mented that CS5 is really the release they wanted when CS4 came out and that CS5 is a game-changer over both previous versions… On that account, we haven’t seen a bad review of CS5 yet.

Hi Clifford, thanks for your thoughts. Well, it’s a Catch-22 – if we want After Effects to evolve and improve its functionality and features, the file format needs to change to manage the additional data and details…

So, that makes it impossible to load newer file formats into an older version – because the newer capabilities didn’t exist yet when CS4 was written.

1) I would like to know about compatibility issues:
a. Opening older file versions (ex: opening CS4-5 files in CS5.5)
b. Down-saving files in CS5.5 to be compatible in older versions
c. Transparency issues when converting to .PDF from CS5.5

– and I did what you suggested HOWEVER – AE CS5.5 is behaving bizarrely – barely working – can’t scrub the timeline, it goes black – almost every time I try to do something it takes several minutes to process – delete something – save and shutdown – reopen and the files I deleted are still there??

No, absolutely no problem on having CS4 & CS5 on your machine – you can keep both CS4 and CS5.5 on the same computer if you want, and many people do. All CS releases work independently and are separately installable and uninstallable.

Oct. 27th, 2011 was a terrible day. It was the day that my Macromedia 2004 MX Flash quit working. It forced spending an huge amount of money on Adobe’s Flash CS 5.5 which has not impressed me at all. It wasn’t the fact that it limits one to 16000 frames of animation or the fact that it limits you to importing a 8100 pixel width of an image. Nope. I was able to deal with those problems. However, the straw that broke the camel’s back came when all the work, creativity and love I put into my animations could not even be enjoyed outside of the stupid limitations of the (Adobe) flash timeline. The quicktime export (a H.264 compression) either dropped frames or duplicated them!! This resulted in an unsmooth, jittery and UNprofessional presentation!! Before spending on this mediocore software I made sure of the system requirements: OS 10.5.8 (check), 1GB of Memory (I have 3GB… check), Quicktime 7.6.2 (I have 7.7… check). I played by the rules and when I spoke to the Tech Support representative (who’s English was just as mediocore as this software) he told me he’d get back to me. It’s been 5 days and my problem is not solved. My projects have been delayed and I am losing clients as well as my patience. To the “fatcats” of Adobe: I know I am microscopic in your eyes. You’ve trained your minons to calmly repond with “I am sorry. We no longer service Marcromedia” but Iet me remind you that small drops can overfill a pail. I am one of those drops.

It isn’t an export problem and Quicktime isn’t to blame. I entered my problem in Adobe’s Flash Forum and now it seems that Flash needs a code called “cacheAsBitmap” in my movieclips. Here is what I had posted:

Problem: My animation is a piano music scrolling from right to left at 30 fps. The bitmaps are approximately 6000px(w) x 197(h) and all under 300k. These bitmaps have been converted into symbols for them to tween across the stage. There are 16 bitmaps total and each bitmap takes under 50 seconds to scroll from one side to the other until another bitmap takes over to keep the flow of music uninterrupted. The timeline (as well as the Quicktime H.264 export) is plagued with short stutters, jittering and is unsmooth. I have used smoothing in the bitmap properites. I have restarted my computer and exported without any applications on. I have reduced the bitmaps to gifs. (Hell… I even unplugged my Internet modem!!!). Nothing I do seems to provide me with an smooth animation!!!

Let me, first, thank you for taking the time to help me out.
I’m afraid the bitmaps in my animation have been converted into graphics, not movie clips.
I could go ahead and convert them.
However, at the risk of imposing, I would please ask of you to explain how to
“enable the cacheAsBitmap property of [my] tweening symbols”.

That’s fairly complex Gerubach. And regrettably, this post here isn’t really the forum for that… Your best shots at getting an answer is either Adobe Support as you contacted, or the Expert Forum thread you started. Good luck!

Can anyone help with a question? I want to learn InDesign, but can’t afford the software. I saw an old version of CS2 for sale inexpensively. Would that be ok to learn on? If I found a job requiring InDesign, would I still have basic skills if I learned from CS2? Or be able to pick up CS5 pretty quickly? Thanks

Yes, tons and tons! CS3 from 2007 is absolutely ancient history in Adobe video tool world, and hardly worth using in our opinion… Premiere Pro did not start becoming better regarded as a tool until around CS5.